


Soul Kiss

by KingOuija



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Cannibalism, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Gore, M/M, Nudity, Suggestive Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 09:20:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20543789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingOuija/pseuds/KingOuija
Summary: Post-Watcher's Crown, the thing wearing Jon's skin wants to understand everything, starting with Elias.





	Soul Kiss

There are no flashes of light. There are no trumpets of annunciation. The earth doesn't tremble. Reality doesn't warp around the figure in front of Elias. No crown or halo appears atop its head.

And there's still no doubt it worked.

It's not Jon that looks blearily at Elias from behind Jon's eyes, as if just awoken. Not the Archivist, either. It's no less than the Beholding. Even if it hadn't been for the fizz of its abstracted gaze where it touches his skin, Elias would have known.

"Why are you doing that?" It says crossly in too-familiar a voice. "Get up so I can look at you."

Elias obediently climbs to his feet to let it Behold him however it likes. But its notice has slipped to its own clothing now. It looks at its clothed body with distaste.

"What's all this idiocy? It's getting in my way."

It tears off Jon's tie impatiently, and flings it to the floor. Then it sets to work on his shirt buttons, clumsily at first, and then with greater confidence.

"Help me out with this, would you?"

Elias's fingers tremble at the familiarity--no, at what would be profanity, if the Beholding hadn't ordered it. But which, because ordered, is an honor beyond imagining. He fumbles open the button at Jon's waistband. Opens the fly, feeling the jerk of each zipper tooth in his oversensitive fingers. Then Elias drops to the ground, echoing his earlier reverence, to unlace Jon's shoes, then ease them off its feet. It manages Jon's underwear and socks itself, having grown quickly comfortable in its skin.

How beautifully it wears its skin.

A monster's terrible because it's an in-between thing. A god wadded up into a human skin, constrained and uncomfortable. Or, as the Archivist had been, a human stumbling around in a god's skin--embarrassed by its strength, terrified of the idea of claiming its rights. But now a god lives in god's skin, and everything that made it weak and ridiculous has been burned away.

And somehow, at the same time, it's still the same little dark-haired man Jon was.

Elias can see all the scars now that it stands naked, even the knife scar in its back, reflected in the office window. The holes that allowed the divinity to pour through.

The body tells the story of Jon's ascension. The pocks in Jon's legs and face. The jagged scar in his chest. The right hand, scar tissue rippled. The white notch at the front of his throat. Then, full body and very faint--fainter than stretchmarks--is the subtle grain where the body was rewoven entirely on Jon's pattern but of Beholding's material. The tiny scar on the front of the shoulder that looks no more serious than a paring knife knick. The white lines around the wrists and ankles where Jon had wrestled himself bloody fighting his bonds. The knife scar in the back, so fresh it's still pink inside. And finally, the pink crater in the forehead, where Elias shot the lock off the door in Jon's mind only a few minutes ago and let the Beholding through.

"Thank you," it says, stepping out of the pile of Jon's trousers and underthings. "What are you, anyway?"

"I-I'm Elias Bouchard. Head of the Magnus Institute." Then, at its blank expression, "The Watcher?"

"I know that," It says impatiently. "What else are you? You're not normal. Not human. But you're not entirely...of us. You're separate from us. I can't quite make you out."

"Why don't you ask me? You know, properly."

From the expression on its face, it hadn't thought to try. It covers up its oversight with bluster. "I hadn't wanted to be rude." Elias tries not to smile. How's it so incredible yet so cute? It's a good thing its expressions are just as transparent as Jon's, as Elias could no more read its mind than he could read the sun. It goes on, "But with your permission…"

"Of course. In this and whatever more you wish."

It rolls its eyes, as if to say "let's not get ahead of ourselves" and asks what he is.

It's like a giant hand has struck the strings that compose Elias, and he trembles not bodily, but atomically. The world shakes apart around the center where Jon's eyes hang, looking at him, in their familiar soft, dark way. Elias is gabbling his history, his family, his secrets, his plans, and once those superficialities have been run through, reciting his being.

After a while, it begins to scowl, a vertical furrow between its brows. It twists a pinky finger in its ear. Then it puts up its hand. "That's all Greek to me," it says. The noises Elias is making by this time could well be actual Greek--they are nothing Elias can understand. And apparently nothing the Beholding understands, either. Then "You can stop. Please."

He does, panting and lightheaded. He's hard and his face is hot and teary, his devotional circuits so overloaded they've flooded the rest of his emotional board. The Beholding seems unsurprised and unconcerned by the state of him, wearing a very familiar expression of inward-focused perplexity.

"Well, shit. I don't know how I'm to make sense of all of it if I can't even figure out what you are."

"Please, there must be some way I can show you," Elias says, his voice thin and desperate. His hands grasp at his shirt buttons, then go still. He must not preempt the Beholding.

It is running its hands over its forearms curiously now. Its noticed it is covered in gooseflesh, as Elias noted when he helped it undress. "It's irritating," it says, "being so limited by the senses of this body." Elias notices the hair of its head swirling free from its scalp as if it's immersed in some watery current. "I think it would help if I could touch you."

Now Elias's hands move, flying down his row of buttons. It slides its fingers across his chest. Its arms encircle him. "Let me--" Elias says and chokes, but it does not smite him for his temerity. It lets him finish removing his shirt and vest before bringing its arms back up to touch him again.

Its touch feels unlike anything Elias has felt before, but it feels most like the tiny minnows whose curious mouths tickled his ankles when he'd wade as a child. The little hairs risen on its body are testing the surface of him, moving flexibly and purposefully as an insects' legs. "Better?" Elias asks. Its fingers are probing his scapula, his spine, with the same gentle curiosity. Its large, dark eyes are looking down and inward, quite unconcerned with any possible social dimension to the embrace. Elias is still hard, of course, and is pressing into its naked hip. Its indifference to the situation is exacerbating the situation.

"A bit," it says. Its head curls forward and it breathes in where Elias's neck meets his clavicle. Then it grasps Elias's arm, raises it, and smells his armpit. Surprised and ticklish, Elias squirms and flattens his arm to his side. It raises its head again to sniff at his exhaled breath. "I think it'd help if I could taste," it says.

"Then, by all means…" Elias manages evenly, despite his plunging stomach.

It kisses like a god--completely unlike a human, and with no consideration of human pleasure or comfort. Its tongue explores the pocket between his lip and gums, counts his teeth, flattens his own tongue to the floor of his mouth as it pushes against the door to his stomach. The whole time, its hands hold Elias's face immobile, thumbs hooked into the corners of his mouth, holding it open.

Its teeth catch his bottom lip and bite. It tears Elias's lip off, sucking it into its mouth with a pulpy slurp. The Beholding's thumbs force their way inside his mouth, thumbs pressing flat against Elias's hard palate. Then force through into his sinuses, as easily as puncturing styrofoam. The skullshaking crunch sounds like a building falling on top of Elias. Elias is too shocked to scream. Before there's any pain, there's the smell of blood and the taste of snot. The fluid tries to flood Elias's throat, and his lungs force air up his windpipe like he's been punched. The pain obliterates thought, but Elias's body doesn't need to think to try to save him.

"Hold still," the Beholding says in Jon's dry, irritated voice, and Elias does. Even the chattering of his jaw stops. Which makes it easier for it to fit its hand into Elias's mouth and force his jaw out of socket.

Beneath Jon's big, dark, curious eyes, a vertical stripe of red falls from the Beholding's mouth down its neck and chest. Both of its hands are forced inside Elias's mouth now, twisted to grip either side of the hole it punched in Elias's palate. Its forearms tense, readying to pull.

"It's alright," it says to Elias, "I think I've figured out what I need to do now."

Full understanding doesn't come immediately. Manual dismemberment of Elias's body is not particularly illuminating on its own--aside from some unusual bone wear, his body is indistinguishable from the body of any healthy, fairly fit fifty-something man. The flavors and textures of the body--the salt and cream of the brain, the dark pungency of the marrow, the chewy fascia that have to sit in the mouth for long minutes before they dissolve enough to yield their subtle savor--are delicious and new. The Beholding begins to understand with its tongue. But it's not until its stomach enzymes comb through strands of protein, sorting them and breaking them, soaking out little shining pearls of fat, that it finally begins to grasp the truth of Elias.

It rolls onto its back among the scattered gore of him, enjoying the gradual revelation happening inside it. But before Elias is even fully understood, it feels itself, again, begin to become curious.


End file.
